To make the most of our last week with my leaving housemate 4 of us aussie volunteers set off for an adventure in Mongolia’s far-west. I had been here on a work trip but didn’t get to see the big draw-cards, including climbing to a glacier at Mongolia’s highest peak – Tavan Bogd.
Sally had seen the north, the south and the east. Obviously she needed to see the west before she left. So I organised an exciting itinerary with all the things I had missed and that anyone should see when they come to Ulgii.
As it turned out we didn’t see many of those things…a dodgy van and half-frozen rivers got in the way of that.
But we had a fantastic time. This region is mostly populated by Kazakh-Mongols, famous for their hospitality. Both our arranged hosts and the families we intruded on when our car broke down didn’t disappoint in this aspect. Our impromptu visits gave a real insight into the different lives people live out here…some were very poor, some had gorgeous 2 year old children stuck inside due to winter in a house with an entire space smaller than my lounge-room back home.
We also experienced first-hand the absolute necessity of this ‘open-door’ policy – when its –20 outside you rely on some shelter to survive, and saw the social aspect of people just popping in during the day for some warm tea and a laugh in between herding animals in the snow.
Here is some of the highlights of the trip in pictures….
Stunning Views
The view from the small brick/wooden home of our hosts near Tavan Bogd:
Food
Lots of car breakdowns meant lots of visiting total strangers.
A spread similar to this is always on hand in any Mongolian home – similar to a cuppa and some biscuits at any Aussie house.
The big bowl in the middle has bread type stuff – fried in fat and fairly stale. Each person is handed a bowl of salty milk tea. You dip the bread in the tea to make it chewable, and eat along with fresh cream (bowl top left with spoon), butter (just right of the bread), cheese (the yellow strips below the butter), dried curds – the brown stuff at the bottom of the pic.
In our home-stay we were served the famous kazakh dish “Five Fingers”. The first night was delicious – the dish features meat, vegies and 4-inch square strips of pasta type stuff, eaten with your hands.
The second night we were treated to a freshly prepared goat – head, liver, intestines, stomach – the best parts our hosts would argue. Luckily for us foreigners there were potatoes and carrots too.
This was a lunch, made from the same goat – lots of fat, some decent flesh parts of the animals and potato.
Back in town we enjoyed the yummy food of the Turkish restaurant.
New Friends
Old Friends
Car Troubles
Bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd
Bogged in a not-quite-frozen river for an entire day. The Ranger came to help after lunch and got bogged too!
We tried everything. Absolutely everything – even jumping on the back of the car, because maybe….well, we had no idea what that could possibly achieve.
The good news of our “bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd” story is that the weather was perfect – almost no wind, except when we tried a picnic lunch, and maybe about –10 temps with clear blue skies and a stunning backdrop of mountains, along with a good foot of gorgeous, powdery snow made for fun day of frollicking in the snow…for about 6 hours – then we started to get a bit worried.
We were taking no chances with frozen rivers after our day stuck the day before. The driver skidded the car successfully across the near frozen river while we watched with bated breaths and half-closed eyes, and then found our own way across.
About 40km from town our back wheel decided it had had enough and just came off.
Right when the sun was setting and temperature plummeting.
